Why Astronomers Love Python And Why You Should Too (Search Woes)

From the description:

The Python programming language is a widely used tool for basic and advanced research in Astronomy. Watch this amazing presentation to learn specifics of using Python by astronomers. (Jake Vanderplas, speaker)

The only downside to the presentation is Vanderplas mentions software being on Github, but doesn’t supply the URLs.

For example, if you go to Github and search for for “Large Synoptic Survey Telescope” you get two (2) results:

Both “hits” are relevant but what did we miss?

Try searching for LSSTC.

There are twelve (12) “hits” with the first one being highly relevant and completely missed by the prior search.

Two lessons here:

Search is a lossy way to navigate Github.

Do NOT wave your hands in the direction of Github for software. Give URLs.

Science-specific tools and extensions for SQL. Currently the project contains user defined functions (UDFs) for MySQL including spatial geometry, astronomy specific functions and mathematical functions. The project was motivated by the needs of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).